Manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales which show clear signs of scribal interference have long been dismissed by editors as ‘bad texts.’ Now, however, these same manuscripts are being revalued by reception historians for the evidence they provide regarding the earliest reception of Chaucer’s work1 To be sure, most extant manuscripts of the Tales offer some sort of evidence regarding its fifteenth-century reception, in the form of illustrations, rubrics, marginal notes or doodles; however, it may be argued that striking scribal alterations of the text itself offer the best evidence of how Chaucer’s near contemporaries responded to his work.

Those interested in the reception of the Wife of Bath are particularly fortunate in that her Prologue is by far the most altered piece in the Tales. I think the primary reason for this is that her Prologue is both contentious and ambiguous: contentious in its discussion of marriage and ambiguous in its representation of the Wife’s sexual morality. As a result, scribal interference with this text is not only frequent and striking, but often contradictory, leading me to hypothesize two different scribal receptions of the Wife’s Prologue: one informed by clerical asceticism, misogyny and misogamy and the other by a more popular and positive attitude towards sex, women and the institution of marriage.

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Starting around 500 AD, Medieval Warfare examines European history during the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, and the beginning of the Renaissance (the magazine generally leaves off around 1500). With a host of different nations and cultures competing for dominance during this period, topics in the magazine are extremely varied and diverse. While popular topics such as the Crusades and Anglo-French wars are given regular coverage, Medieval Warfare also tackles more complex and obscure topics, such as the myriad wars between the Italian city-states and the frequent conflicts between Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

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